Presenting . . . a broader view of predicates
Get ready to take a closer — and fuller — look at the predicate. Crucially, it makes for “half” of the all-important (not to mention essential) grammatical building block of the sentence, the main clause.
Once a sentence writer has named a subject (to be explored in depth in my next post (1e) in the Stage 1 series, the writer must follow up, as you will read in some detail below, by giving the subject something to either do, be, or have (my own definition of the predicate — and soon you’ll see why.)
Yes, our sentences usually present the subject first, then the predicate, as shown and exemplified in my Stage 1-b post, on main clauses. Borrowing the the example played out there (and again using my typographical aid of bold for subjects and italics for predicates), “taxes suck.” But I am putting predicates first, in this pair of deeper-dive posts, since predicates carry the heaviest load in my “activated” system, a system that will come to fruition in Stage 3, right here in Writing Lessons.
Note: It helps avoid confusion (if and when discussing predicates, as one might do if talking with another writer or maybe a teacher — or maybe someone in your Book Club!) to understand the difference between the “simple predicate” and the “complete predicate.” Honestly, unless you are taking some kind of grammar test or (oddly) discussing predicates, which most people never do (!), this distinction doesn’t really matter a lot.
But right now we are, indeed, discussing predicates (at least I am!). So please make sure that, before you dive in here, you have read the prior post (Stage 1c), which clears up the simple versus “complete” predicate. Doing so will help reinforce their nature and function, and those do matter right now, as we consider the potentially active “half” of the ultra-important (grammatically speaking) “main clause“ — aka the “essense” of any sentence.
What does the predicate do?
We might say, the predicate “puts the verb to the noun.” That’s a loose way to say it, but it’s true. The sentence’s subject — or, as I’ve called it, “the thing the sentence is talking about” — will, indeed, always be some kind of noun.
And, when a noun is functioning as the sentence’s subject, that noun needs something to do, be, or have (the subject needs its predicate, which will be one of those three verb types).
Some popular, but erroneous, grammar sites (including a few major ones I consulted just today, to confirm and update my understanding of “what’s out there”), tell readers that a grammatically correct MC requires just “a noun and a verb.” But we know better.
More precisely, its not simply a “noun plus a verb” that constitute a main clause, hence a complete sentence — it’s particular forms of “nouns” and “verbs” that MCs require: namely a subject plus its predicate. If those sloppy sites had it right, and MCs need only a noun and a verb to stand as a complete sentence, then “House dancing” would count as a complete sentence. Why not? It combines a noun and a verb. See? Those terms — noun and verb — are quite broad; they come in many forms.
In fact, without needing any grammatical terms at all, the way our English language works (as you’ve already learned), “every sentence says, asks, or commands something about something.”
That’s the rock-bottom truth of it — no technical terms necessarily needed. Yes, the subject will be some kind of noun, and the predicate some kind of verb, but nouns and verbs come in many forms, and lots of these, if combined would not sound like a correct sentence at all, even if your house were dancing! Well, there’s certainly both a noun and a verb there, but notice that it’s nothing like a complete sentence. It does not give us “something that is doing, being, or having something.
Here’s the narrative version of Stage 1 of my system
Please note, dear reader-student, that you are not going to see my above definition of predicate anywhere but here. I have hunted like crazy. It’s not out there. I came up with this definitional understanding not by repeating (as most grammar sites do) the same stuff seen on pretty much every other grammar site, but by pushing my students, in ever-evolving ways, as I worked to learn, myself, what truly impacts student writing — and what does not.